In the week that they finally cracked the top 40 with Cough Cough, a taster for their second album, there are things about Manchester's mathtronic masters Everything Everything that they might wish were left unsaid. Such as that when singer Jonathan Higgs drops out of his trademark eunuch falsetto during the swelling cello pomp of Duet, he sings so uncannily like Chris Martin that we're essentially doing the trendster jerk to Viva la Vida. Or that for every achingly credible reference point – Radiohead, These New Puritans, XTC, Foals, Destiny's Child – you can point to an equally cringeworthy one, including the Thompson Twins, Howard Jones, Level 42, and even late-70s Genesis.

Nevertheless, Everything Everything represent the most intricate, streamlined merging yet of math rock's arch complexities, electronica's 80s obsession and hooks made from mobile phone interference. And they're fast becoming the great alt hopes. Snippets of their second album aired tonight bristle with the drama and ambition that could spearhead an assault on the mainstream. Cough Cough's snare stampedes and frenetic hip-hop horns nod to the multilayered puzzle-pop of 2010's debut album Man Alive but are a false feint; other new tracks such as Don't Try, Duet and Kemosabe are laced with hints of Sade soul, Nik Kershaw synth-pop, OK Computer choruses, Ibiza kick-offs and not a little Coldplay. EE's scientific bent – Higgs encases his romantic pains in images of Faraday cages and dividing cells and attempts to discover his own boson by cramming in more words than each song's physics allows – has been turned to perfecting a future arena formula.

So first album favourites Suffragette Suffragette (famed for an often-misheard chorus that doesn't go "who's gonna sit on your face when I'm gone?") and Photoshop Handsome are given epic refurbishments, while the afro-whistles and tongue-twisting wordplay of Schoolin' now sound less like an MIA collaboration with Vicky Pollard and more like an O2 encore. Captivating inventions – even the Coldplay bits.

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